Increasing concern with fossil fuel as an energy source and concern with the safety of nuclear power has led to interest in the development of alternative energy sources such as solar power.
One of the major problems with solar power is the large area required for photovoltaic converters and even thermal solar energy converters when these must be directly positioned in the path of the solar radiation.
Although photovoltaic efficiency has been increasing in recent years, even with the augmented efficiency, direct impingement of solar rays upon photovoltaic plates requires that the installation cover large areas which may not be readily available, especially for the average household.
Furthermore, efforts to overcome this problem by the use of light concentrators or the like have not always proved to be effective. Reference may be had, for example, to U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,503 which discloses a relatively complex system intended to maximize the solar collection of heat from the sun with automatic tracking of the path of the sun.
Efforts have also been made to increase the energy output by passing a compressed gas through a solar collector (U.S. Pat. No. 4,942,736) or to provide tower systems which convey a vapor to a high point at which the vapor is condensed to a liquid and the falling liquid will drive a turbine (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,757,687). Other solar collectors of interest are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,117,682, 4,236,937, 4,676,068, 4,558,551, 4,392,008, 4,219,729, 4,720,170 and 3,996,918.
These systems do not solve the main problems discussed above with respect to the large areas required, the complexity of the systems, and the ability to install an effective solar energy system in, for example, a residence or similar structure.